Deep Dive: Ayesha Hall

Diane: Thank you so much, Ayesha, for joining me! So, to start, how did you get to know Maine Humanities?

Ayesha: When I first got to Maine—I would call my family nomadic—there’s a way of entering into a community or a new space in that you find the places and spaces that make sense to who you are. I make sure that my family can connect with people and spaces and places to essentially stay human during a transition. 

And around that time, someone had mentioned something happening with Maine Humanities: the Big Question. I thought, “That sounds like a really interesting event to host. I wonder who these people are.” That was the first hint of Maine Humanities: that there is a safe space for big questions, big conversations. I didn’t feel so out of place.

That was also the year of your Afrofuturism series. There was a lot of social unrest around the violence that the African American community had encountered over the years, and the response of the Maine Humanities Council was to take on Afrofuturism and to ask a question about where are we as Black people in the future. I dove right in. I’m an educator. At the time, I was working for Lewiston Public Schools, and I’m a reader. I’m a book nerd. The library is my favorite place. And so it all just fit.

“Reading and discovering people…it’s a group thing, right? It’s a community thing.”

– Ayesha Hall

And with that, I had the time and space to dive into reading again. Reading and discovering people. It’s a group thing, right? It’s a community thing. And at that time I just said, “I want this more often than not.” That year, with Rivers Solomon and An Unkindness of Ghosts, it just filled me with a lot of hope. I did not know it was the hope I needed for the years to come. Sticking with the Maine Humanities community became a safe haven, mentally, that I didn’t know I needed in these times. You don’t realize you need it until you have it. And you’re like, why wasn’t I doing this before? Or: How was I not engaging in literature, in storytelling, in this way?

A small-group discussion at Readers Retreat 2023. Photo: Michelle Shupp

Diane: I love that Maine Humanities offered that safe space for these discussions, and helped provide that hope. I hear from a lot of people that there just aren’t many other places where this is happening.

Ayesha: I know. Who’s putting time into doing this? It’s beneficial, but it’s so intangible. It does take a lot of faith and a lot of hope to execute these types of programs. Especially now, where everyone’s just tapped out and it’s like, well, I don’t have a spark to give away. And it feels like Maine Humanities is like, here’s a spark, here’s a space where you can try to spark something.  

“…it feels like Maine Humanities is like, here’s a spark, here’s a space where you can try to spark something.”

– Ayesha Hall

Diane: That is such a fantastic metaphor. Thank you. You once told me a beautiful story about one of these sparks. I was wondering if you could share it again. It was when you experienced the Parable Path, our partnership with Indigo Arts, Maine Inside Out, and Bowdoin College.

Ayesha: Yes. I took my daughter with me and we experienced Toshi Reagon, the whole show. It was beautiful. But the whole Parable Path. That was something that I had not experienced before. There isn’t another space where Octavia Butler is the truth. It feels supernatural to have her storytelling in the midst of what’s happening right now. And even back then— It just felt like the safe havens you can go to mentally to fill you back up, to bring you into a reality that isn’t negative and nasty. Telling the story of Parable of the Sower in the way that we decided to do that—it was life-changing.

And to engage in a story that I had read as a child and then to come back to it in a way that was healing. I’m a musician. And so telling stories through music is a dream come true. I didn’t think I’d get that in Maine.  I think I’ve taken it for granted in other places, the art of storytelling and the medicine that music is. But that was a refreshing walk to be on. And to take my daughter on that journey, to reintroduce a story that has been alive and, again, supernatural in the way that it has been positioned in our society right now. I could go for another Parable Path. I probably should pick that book up again for what is going on right now.   

The Parable Path at Bowdoin College: Toshi Reagon and Liza Jessie Peterson. This statewide project culminated in Portland with a performance of Toshi Reagon’s opera: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Photo: Mary Baumgartner

Diane: It’s stunning how relevant it is. The parallels with our times when I first read it, and the even greater parallels now, like you said. During Parable Path, we had a staff-wide book group with Parable of the Sower, and I remember we kept talking about the hope in the book. What is your definition of hope?

Ayesha: To me, hope is believing in something that you can obviously believe in but that you can’t see. It’s being invested in something positive or full, something that’s going to benefit something bigger than you. Being invested in that without any evidence. So I am investing my emotions, probably my money, my soul, into something that I can’t see, but believe should happen. It’s hard to describe because it’s an intangible thing. You have a vision for it. Hope is “I see what I want.” And I’m wanting for it so much. And I believe in it so much that I am pushing forward to get it. Even though I can’t touch it, I know it’s there

Diane: Now I’m thinking about how the books we used during our Afrofuturism years embodied what you just described. Take An Unkindness of Ghosts. It went out to so many groups, was discussed by so many people. That was one powerful book, and so full of hope. And other books in that series. They all ended up being models, giving us a hint of what we can do.

Ayesha: Like, what can we do with hope. And also: You’re not the only one feeling like that

Diane: Yes. That: You’re not alone.

Ayesha: So stories that I would read, especially as a little girl or as a young adult, helped me know that I had a spark, but there was nothing to ignite that for me. It was like having a match with no way to spark the flame. And those books did that. The book is that catalyst. Those stories are catalysts.

But it’s like, oh, Octavia Butler, I see you, girl, I see what you’re doing here. Even though it was the 80s, we saw it. And so going back to the Parable Path, being able to tell this story to my daughter, to be able to feel it, as a teacher or as an educator, and ask her, “So what resonated for you?”

Maine Humanities had all these great pithy questions that you put together. But in that moment, there are some stories and some paths that you can’t really navigate without being in it. And there usually aren’t words to talk through. But that gave me an opportunity.

We were blessed to have all of those books that were part of that series, which is also how Maine Humanities Council got me. Like, how dare you have all these books in the same space! I have a shelf where those books are and it feels good to walk past it in my library. And it includes the graphic novels. My youngest daughter has dyslexia. And so she gravitates to graphic novels. And I’m looking forward to throwing that her way. “If you’re a young Black woman, this is something you need to know. There’s this lady called Octavia Butler, and she’s amazing, and she’s no longer here, but she’s still here. How? Here you go.”

“…this is what got us through, got us off the ledge, because we knew what was coming, because Octavia wrote it all those decades ago.”

– Ayesha Hall

Diane: Talk about writing something that will always be relevant, you know? But one day, if we’re lucky, those stories will be more part of our history than part of our present. And then we’ll say, “This is how we did it. This is how we survived.”

Ayesha: And this is what got us through, took us off the ledge, because we knew what was coming, because Octavia wrote it all those decades ago. [Laughs] I work for the government, so I’m mostly talking about, you know, LD-7, and who and what evidence you have for that. This is the one time this year that I’ve had an opportunity to talk about Octavia Butler. I just need to discuss something about her. 

Diane: Thank you so much. That’s part of what I love about this work: being able to have all these conversations about books that change our lives. Now I’m going to ask you to recommend a book  

Ayesha: This book has been important to me. It’s called Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human. And it’s by Cole Arthur Riley. It’s meaningful to me because I’m here in Maine where my identity is so unique—I’m a New York City kid from down South—and I’ve had to hold my identity so close so that I don’t feel like it’s being lost or drowned out. Cole Arthur Riley speaks to me as a Black woman going through this and how to stay close to the faith that I’m rooted in without having to completely reject where I am right now. This is a book that I refer to often for staying human.

I’m trying to see if there’s a letter or a prayer that’s short enough to read. There are a few in here that I’m like, you speak in my life. If we have time, this one is called “Forgiveness.”

Ayesha Hall reads Forgiveness by Cole Arthur Riley

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